Vulgar History Podcast
Joanna of Naples (Ann’s Version)
April 2, 2025
Ann Foster:
Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and today… Today, we’re throwing it back to 2020. Remember that? It was… it was a time. I was going to say it was a simpler time. Was it? I don’t know… Mm. Maybe it was. It was a different time. It was a pandemic era time, and I wanted to mention that because I mentioned the pandemic several times in this episode that you’re about to hear.
So, this episode is about Joanna of Naples, who, for quite a while, was the highest-ranking person on the Fredegund Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale. She’s still up, like, anyone above 30 is kind of in the upper echelon of scores. She has since been, you know, other people have popped in, taken over a higher score from her, but for a while, she just came out of truly nowhere. One of the least known people that I had covered on the podcast to that date, and her story is really exciting. I was looking back at the episode, you know, to prepare to do this new introduction, this 2025 introduction of a 2020 episode. And I was like, fuck yeah, this is a great story! I remember why I got excited about it. I remember now why I had planned that whole season and then suddenly threw this episode on at the end because I got so excited about the story. It’s great. It’s a classic Vulgar History situation; you know, you’ve got plague; you’ve got people being thrown out of windows, AKA defenestration is the word for that; you’ve got accused murder; you’ve got a dramatic courtroom appearance; you’ve got coin minting moments. It really establishes a lot of the things that come up again and again on this podcast.
I also know that this podcast started with me doing episodes, just me talking. It was just me. I didn’t start having guests for, like, the first two years of the show when I realized that authors are happy to come on the show and they can explain things to me live in front of all of you and that just kind of works out really well for me because I learn something and you learn something and we’re able to have episodes every week. So, I know that people miss having just an episode that’s just me talking. So, this is going to be one of them; it’s me from 2020 talking, but it’s still me. I do want to reassure you that there’s going to be some episodes coming up this spring that are just going to be classic Vulgar History, just me talking. The only guest is my beautiful cat Hepburn, who makes appearances when she decides to grace us all with her presence. So, that’s coming up, and, you know, thank you for hanging in here.
It’s been quite a time— I mean, it is quite a time for everyone in the world, especially in North America right now and in other places as well. I live in North America, so there’s a lot going on here. Anyway, I’ve been busy working on my book, which is why I haven’t done solo episodes for a while because those take a lot more research time for me, and all my research time is being spent getting my book ready. But that is going to be, I’m going to have news so soon about when you can start placing pre-orders, the exciting pre-order treats that I will be using to entice you to order the book months before it’s even published because that is a thing that all authors do and so I’ll be doing that as well. Also, a special shout out to Tits Out Brigade member Miya, who I met when I was in Minneapolis in March, who mentioned that she likes these throwback episodes. So, here’s another one for you, Miya. Hope you enjoy the saga of Joanna of Naples.
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Hello and welcome to the Vulgar History podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and this is a feminist women’s history comedy podcast, and today is the Season Two finale. So, this is the ninth episode in our series looking at Women Leaders in History and the Men Who Whined About Them. There has been a lot of leading, there’s been a lot of whining, there’s been a lot of patriarchy getting in the way, there’s been a lot of just women who probably could have done a lot more stuff if they hadn’t had to spend so much time swatting away all these people who kept bothering them.
So, last week’s episode on Queen Anne, I had been sort of like, it was a moving target what was going to be the last episode of this season— Which, to clarify, not the last episode forever, just the last episode of this little pocket of things. I had been going chronologically, and then just as I was working on the Queen Anne one then, you know, you might not know, but there’s a pandemic going on in the world and that got me looking at all this stuff about pandemics in general, and then that got me thinking about… So, I was doing the pandemic special episodes of this podcast, and so I was thinking about the different, different pandemic stories that I wanted to share on those short podcasts, and one of them involves Joanna of Naples. Because I remember there’s this thing, and we’re going to get to it in this podcast, obviously, where some interesting plague-related things happen around her and that got me… So, I was like looking back to see like, okay, what was her deal, just so I could sort of get a grip on it for myself so that I could explain it to other people. And then as I was sort of making up a little document script of, like, what you need to know to understand the plague part of her story, I realized like, oh, this is going to be much longer than a little 15-minute mini episode because there’s so much stuff, even just to get you to the point where the plague stuff happens and then so much stuff happens after the plague stuff.
So, here we are with this, sort of, extra non-chronological story of Joanna of Naples here at the tail end of this season of Vulgar History. So, Joanna, I’m just thinking if you want to do like a Fast and the Furious/Star Wars thing to listen to the podcasts in order, I believe Joanna of Naples sequentially comes between Empress Matilda and Isabella I. So, if you’re not listening to these as they come out, you could slot Joanna back in, in between those two people.
I also wanted to mention there’s so many wonderful other podcasts that I’ve been listening to, and I’ve been doing a lot of podcast-listening lately, what with pandemic, et cetera. And there’s so much support and lifting each other up and wonderfulness in the history podcast online community. One of the most welcoming and nicest podcasts is the What’shername podcast, which you should all subscribe to as well. They’ve got so many episodes, I listen to them for research and also for fun. So, they tweeted a couple of days ago on April 20th… They were sharing this article that’s basically about like, “Why are women such good leaders during COVID-19?” which is the same sort of stuff that people are like, “Wow! These countries that are doing well with this pandemic, they have female leaders. Female leaders are better than men leaders.” And there’s so much about that that’s just overly simplistic and also whatever. Anyway, What’shername podcast succinctly explained this the best that I saw. So, what they said is in their tweet:
When leadership is accessible to more people, you have a better chance at finding good leaders. There have been impressive women leaders for millennia, we just don’t talk about them. Maybe we should start. See, number one, #LearnHistory.
And this is really what I was thinking about when I was preparing the season of this podcast as well, which is sort of the overly simplistic, paternalizing thing of being like, women are inherently nicer or kinder or better or whatever. So much is just how people are socialized and what they’ve been allowed to do. There have been more male leaders than not-male leaders in most of world history, to the point that when there are women leaders, their gender often becomes an issue, as we’ve looked at in these past eight episodes. So, if there was parity, if there was an equal amount of leaders of every gender throughout all of history, there would be, I think, I can’t see why there wouldn’t be, an equal amount of good and bad people of all different genders. But women have more pressure put on them to be amazing when they get to these leadership roles. And every single woman we’ve looked at this season ascended to a leadership role, basically by either being born into it or marrying into it. It’s not a meritocracy. They were sort of women who, even if that annoyed people around them, they were the heirs to whatever kingdom, and so they ended up being in charge. Some of them did amazing things, and some of them weren’t able to do amazing things. And it’s not that women are better leaders than men, it’s just they haven’t had as much chance to be good or to be terrible or whatever.
Anyway, so today we’re looking at the story of Joanna of Naples, who reigned for 30 years, one of the longest reigns we’ve looked at of anyone this season. It’s a story based around a lot of geographical history with which I am much more familiar now than I was a week ago, but which I don’t know nearly as well as I know the history of Britain or Scotland or England or… Anyway.
But Joanna. So, she was the queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily, which, if you’re like, “Wait, are those three places next to each other on the map?” And they’re not, really. But don’t worry about it because we’re not going to be getting into the geography that much. You just need to kind of know… Basically, we’re looking at, like, Italy before Italy was Italy, when it was just a bunch of sort of city-states/kingdoms. That’s sort of where she was based out of, sort of between Italy and France.
So, Naples, 1326. Joanna was born. She was the eldest daughter of Charles, the Duke of Calabria and Marie of Valois. They had had other daughters as well, but she was the first to survive infancy. She had an older sister, Louise, who died that same year, and a brother, Charles, who was born one year later, but he only lived for eight days. She wound up having one surviving sibling, who was a younger sister, called Maria, who was actually born just after her father had died. So, her father died when Joanna was 2. Maria was then born, and she was a baby, and she’s going to be sort of like a best supporting actress queen in this story because Maria’s life was also pretty volatile. So, what this meant, though, is that Joanna, being the granddaughter of a king who’s called Robert the Wise. So, Robert the Wise is her grandfather. Because Joanna’s father had died, that means Joanna is now the heir to inherit Naples.
Basically, the agreement said that his female ancestors, female descendants would be who would inherit the throne if there weren’t any men around. Also, the rules said that a female monarch had to marry and she should allow her husband to rule. So, although there were male relatives here and there, Robert really wanted to stay with that plan. So, to have Joanna and then after her, Maria as his heir. So, he had even a public ceremony when Joanna was 4 years old and Maria was 2 years old, I guess, where he just publicly said, like, “Hey, guess what? This is what’s happening. My heir is going to be Joanna and then her children. And if for some reason she has no children, then my heir will be Maria and then her children.” Some relatives weren’t super excited about this, i.e. the relatives who thought that they should be his heirs instead of these little baby girls.
Some of the relatives include Philip of Taranto. Not Toronto, like Ontario, Canada, but I think it’s pronounced [emphasizes As] Taranto. It’s like Toronto, but with As. This is where it’s going to come up, I should really decide on a pronunciation. And his wife, Catherine of Valois, refused to support the whole Joanna being the heir thing. So, they refused to even go to this ceremony. The Pope tried to intercede — there’s a lot of Pope action in the story — and the Pope was like, “Philip and Catherine, you need to go and go to this thing.” Philip refused, and he only sent a deputy to pay homage to Joanna on his behalf because he just really didn’t think that she should be the heir, not just because she was a girl, but because he thought that he should be the heir, I guess.
So, one year later, Joanna aged 5, Maria aged 3, their mother died. Joanna and Maria, now orphans, parents all dead. But their grandfather, Robert the Wise, is who’s been sort of raising them and so, his wife, Joanna and Maria’s step-grandmother is called Sancia of Mallorca, and she assumed responsibility for their education. Queen Sancia lived like a nun, although the Pope had refused to annul her marriage to King Robert, just so you know what kind of religious thing is happening here. She became a huge influence on Joanna and Maria’s life. She really took charge of their education and raising them and she did a great job from what we see, what they’re able to do when they grow up later.
Even though things were going pretty well in terms of, like, medieval Naples, there was this… Robert the Wise, the grandfather. He had this long-time enemy, which was Hungary, the country of Hungary. It all has to do with, like, who is going to be king and who is going to inherit from where. Robert was actually the younger brother. So, in terms of Hungary, what happened is that there’s three sons— No, there’s two sons. So, Robert’s father died, Robert’s older brother died. And so, technically, his older brother’s son should have become the next king of Hungary, but instead, Robert, no, King of Naples— Oh my god. I’m so sorry. This is just like… What you need to know is that Hungary and Naples were at war, and everyone was related to everyone. Let’s just, like, leave it at that for now because that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about Joanna.
What happened is that Joanna, little tiny girl, to try and stave off a possible Hungarian invasion, it was decided that she would get married to one of these Hungarian princes, who’s also maybe her cousin or something, I’m not sure. So, the one who was chosen was Andrew. So, her cousin, Andrew the Hungarian. And then the stipulation of their betrothal was that Andrew’s heirs would rule Naples, but he himself would only ever serve as Joanna’s consort. So, he wouldn’t be king, even though he was going to be married to her and she was going to one day become the queen. And then Andrew, who’s also just like a little baby at the time, was sent to Naples to grow up there, but people were very xenophobic against the Hungarians because of the whole being at war with each other situation, so he was never really accepted. So, he remained in Naples after this little baby wedding when they were, like, six and four years old or something like that. But what it meant is that even though they were married, like they were little baby children, and it’s not like, “Okay, now act like husband and wife,” but it just meant like they’re married. So, like, no question about that, but they’re waiting until Joanna gets to be 12 or whatever for them to consummate and to start living like man and wife. So, effectively, Andrew just came to live with Joanna and Maria and their other cousins, and he was just, like, this sort of pesky, annoying Hungarian new sibling on the scene. So, they’re just all children growing up together; two of them happen to be married to each other and whatever.
King Robert died in 1343, age 67, after ruling for 34 years as King of Naples. Joanna, age 16, was now officially his heir. It was not a great time to be taking over as Queen of Naples because there had been a series of famines due to the weather got really bad and the crop yields were bad. So, like, things had been pretty great when King Robert was around, partially because he was called Robert the Wise, like, he made some good decisions, but also because just he lucked into some good weather and trade situations. So, Joanna is a teenager, the country is, like, not doing great. Also, a lot of people are like, “She’s female. That’s gross. We don’t like that. And also, she’s 16.” So, it’s just kind of like, eugh! It was precarious, not the best of times for her to be taking over.
So, he died, she becomes queen two days later. And then her husband, Andrew, who’s now 15, was knighted officially and the marriage was consummated in accordance with the late king’s wishes. So, the king, he had wished in his will, I don’t know, that they would consummate their marriage upon his death, whatever. So, they hated each other. Like, Joanna hated Andrew. Andrew hated her/everybody. They basically lived apart; they only met with each other if there was, like, an important dinner where they both had to be. But otherwise, they went to separate churches, they visited separate places, and Joanna forbade him from entering her bedroom without her permission. Andrew, there’s the whole thing where she’s the queen, but he’s just, like, her guy; he doesn’t get to be the king. That extended to… She controlled his allowance and his spendings. Andrew was not happy with any of this; he thought that he should be king. He was mad that everybody was mean to him for being Hungarian, which is, like, fair enough, shitty.
Joanna eventually became pregnant, and that made Andrew even more want to become king. And it’s totally, if you know this story, I haven’t done on the podcast, but I bet a lot of you know the story. It’s very Mary, Queen of Scots/Darnley about it, where like she’s having the baby with this guy that she hates, he wants to be the king, she won’t let him, that makes him mad. So, he started making threats towards her. She just mocked him openly in front of everybody. He bullied and insulted everybody and was just, sort of, a sucky husband to her. And she was, you know, not a great wife to him. But that wasn’t the point of her life to be a great wife to him. She was a queen so screw him, basically.
So, September 18, 1345, Andrew comes home after partying with his guys. Joanna is asleep in bed, and then a servant came to the door saying like, “Oh my god, there’s these papers you need to sign out here, not in your room.” So, he ran out of the room, and then he was seized by a group of men who strung a rope around his neck, dangled him over the railing, and some men down below were, like, pulling on his ankles from below, and he basically was murdered. The thing about it is that Joanna was in the bedroom, and I guess when Andrew tried to, like, run back in the bedroom, he found that the bedroom was locked from the inside. So, like, was Joanna complicit in this murder plot? Did she just say like, “Oh man, someone’s killing Andrew. I’m just going to, like, lock my door now.” Was she like, “Uhhh, a bunch of men yelling, I’m just going to lock my door now.” So, she didn’t help him, not that she should have? I don’t know.
So, at this point, she’s six months pregnant, 19 years old and Queen of Naples and also a widow/the prime suspect in her husband’s murder. So, people, like they do now with everybody, and it’s just bullshit. They’re just like, “Oh, she’s not sad enough or not in the right way,” or whatever. But she people were already prone to not want to like her because she was a young queen and the whole, like, who is an ally of who, the whole Hungarian question. They’re just like, “Oh, this is great. She looks bad in all of this, so let’s just spread some rumours that she was having affairs, that she was responsible for killing him.” And then the thing is that also she had spent ever since she knew him, she’d been like openly mocking him, hating him. So, it’s like, would she kill her husband? It’s like, you know, she probably would have killed her husband. So, in terms of public relations, things were not looking great for her. A man was arrested in connection to the murders, but they cut out his tongue so then he couldn’t say if anyone had put him up to it or whatever. Had he even been involved at all? I don’t know, it’s all pretty sketchy.
The Hungarians, AKA Andrew’s family, were like, “Who killed him?” So, they demanded the Pope do an inquiry into it because the Pope used to do stuff like that, I guess. And the Pope was like, “I’m on it,” but then he had, like, some other Pope things to do, and he sort of didn’t take it on right away. Andrew, the dead teenage husband, had an older brother called Louis, who is now the king of Hungary. And he’s called Louis the Hungarian, and he’s a supporting actor in the story; he’s going to show up a lot. He began to talk about invading Naples because the whole thing where the Hungarians thought that they should be the king of Naples, et cetera. So, things were going pretty bad internationally between all these different places.
Joanna, still pregnant. So, she gave birth on Christmas Day, December 25, 1345, to a son, which was, like, great, excellent news for all the usual, like, everyone’s just like, “Okay, there’s a boy. It’s not just this teenage queen girl. We’ve got a boy. There’s going to be a man-king. Everything’s great.” She named the child Charles Martel and started thinking about getting a new husband for herself for both just, like, protection reasons, because she had been educated really well, but she was not a warrior. She needed somebody who had, like, an army and knew how to do stuff. She just… All the reasons that she needed to find a new husband for her and her little baby.
So, the guy that she wanted to marry was her cousin called Louis of Taranto. So, there’s Louis the Hungarian, who is her enemy, and then now there’s her new husband, Louis of Taranto. There had been speculation that the two of them were involved for a while. He’s, like, super hot, attractive-looking, gorgeous, and he was also a cousin who hung out with them when they were kids, and they were all making fun of Andrew back then. He was sort of like the big, cool guy who was there with them. She got married to him really quickly, which also sort of like, is this like a Mary, Queen of Scots scenario where you’re just like, are her emotions getting away with her? Was she forced into this? But also, she’s forced into it in the sense of, like, the Hungarians were going to invade, and she needed this alliance, pretty much. So, they got married, but they didn’t get the Papal dispensation because, again, the Pope at this time, one of his other jobs when he’s not investigating murders is giving people permission to get married because they’re cousins. But whatever, everyone gets married when they’re cousins. Anyway, the thing here is that they didn’t even wait for him to give the dispensation, they just got married. This whole sequence of events — the whole like, did she kill Andrew? She got quickie married to this guy, didn’t get the Pope’s permission — made everybody in her kingdom just suddenly not like her very much at all.
Meanwhile, in our B plot, Joanna’s younger sister, Maria’s life was a nightmare. So, shortly after the grandfather had died and Joanna became the queen, Maria was abducted by a woman named Agnes of Périgord, who was the widow of John, Duke of Durazzo, because she wanted Maria to marry her son, Charles of Durazzo. And that is what happened. So, Maria was 14 years old or almost 14, she was 13, almost 14. Charles of Durazzo was 20, and they were forced into marriage, and the marriage was consummated by force. So, it’s like, “It’s happened. They’ve got married. The end.” The secret marriage, which Maria doesn’t seem to have been consenting to, but this infuriated Joanna, she didn’t like that Maria got married without her permission. Joanna sent letters to the Pope demanding the annulment of the marriage. Again, she and her BFF, the Pope, just like, Pope is busy doing stuff. The Pope, who was called Clement VI, refused to annul the marriage, and at this point, Joanna was just like, “Okay, you are dead to me. My sister no longer/you’re now my enemies, the entire Durazzo family.”
And then years go by. I believe, five years later, it’s a little montage moment. So, her enemy, Louis of Hungary, is just, like, hacking and slashing his way across the Italian countryside, conquering towns and villages and Joanna and her squad need to figure out what to do. Side note: People from Naples are called Neapolitans, that is what they are called. And the word ‘Neapolitan’ to me, and perhaps to you, makes me think of ice cream. So, I’m going to not use the word Neapolitan very much because I’m just going to say “the people of Naples” because the Neapolitans, I just picture little ice cream cones, and it just is distracting.
So, people are just like making alliances, breaking alliances, and by people, I mean like all these dudes, the Durazzos, the Taranto brothers. So, at one point Joanna is in a castle under siege, she’s by now pregnant with her husband’s baby, she fled her castle in the middle of the night to try and get to Avignon, which is where the Pope lived, to just, like, have a sit down with the Pope and hash things out. So, she fled the castle under darkest night, pregnant in medieval times. This is, like, Empress Matilda level; there wasn’t, like, she wore white and also it was snowy, but this gets her high score points in terms of just bravery. Her husband, Louis of Taranto, heard that she had fled, and so he decided to go to Avignon as well. Unfortunately, in order to escape, she had to leave her son, Charles Martel, behind because she couldn’t escape with him; it was too dangerous, and she didn’t think he would survive a journey. So, his uncle, the Hungarians, sent Charles Martel off to Hungary to be raised by those relatives, but Charles Martel unfortunately died, age 2. While Joanna and her husband, Louis of Taranto, were off headed to the Pope to just, like, straighten things out, her sister, Maria, and her husband, Charles of Durazzo, were like, “Oh, they’re out of town? Amazing. Why don’t we just seize power?” So, Charles, Maria’s husband, seized power, but he was captured and beheaded by the Hungarians only days later. His period of power lasted less than a week, and now Maria was a 19-year-old widow, just like her older sister had been before.
So, Joanna is headed towards Avignon after this great escape and coming just, like, parallel with her, if you picture, like on America’s Next Top Model, they have the airplane with the little faces. So, here we’ve got, like, Joanna heading one way with a little face and the other way, it’s just like a death skeleton because the Black Death, the bubonic plague, was also headed parallel to her, to Avignon. So, the black plague, which we discussed in some of the pandemic special episodes, which you can listen to if you want to hear about how that all progresses. It’s a pretty awful disease, and it kills you really quickly and horrifically. So, the Black Death had arrived in Sicily the previous fall in a fleet of Genoese vessels, so just like how it happened in that little English town where it’s just, like, trade is how it was spreading. Anyway. So, what happened is this ship went into port in Sicily. The sailors all had plague and they, like, stumbled down the gangplank and into the city and then they like spread they between them, the fleas and the rats, just the plague toppled this whole city. By the spring of 1348, which is when the story takes place currently, it had spread to the rest of Italy and beyond.
So, if you remember, there was the whole famine scenario where the crops weren’t growing. So, there was already famine. Their bodies were weak, so they were even more susceptible to die of plague. In some cities like Florence, the death rate was, like, 90 percent. So, small villages just ended, like there’s no one left of them. They’re, like, not a village anymore because people were dying and/or fleeing. So, people died super quickly. Apparently, you could be healthy at sunrise and dead by sunset, but sometimes it was longer, and it was incredibly painful and debilitating.
There were so many dead bodies that the cities didn’t have enough room to bury them. In Avignon, where the Pope lived, he consecrated the river because the whole thing about like, you want to be buried in, like, consecrated ground, but there wasn’t enough ground to consecrate it, and there wasn’t time to bury everybody, so he just consecrated the river. So, every day, hundreds of stinking corpses choked the river and slowly floated downstream to the open sea. So, it’s just, like, a river of dead bodies. So, this is pretty gruesome.
Joanna comes to Avignon. Everything’s pretty awful and gross, but that’s where the Pope is, and she needs to talk to the Pope, so that’s what she’s doing. So, on March 15, 1348, she arrived with great fanfare. She had the whole squad with her; she had the Bishop of Florence, the Chancellor of Provence, 18 Cardinals. Next came Joanna, dressed in a golden crimson robe, her blonde hair gleaming in the morning sun. She’s just gorgeous. Her robe had sort of like fleur de lis on it because that was to remind everybody that she’s descended from the King of France, which she was. Presumably, she would have been riding side saddle. So, just this gorgeous moment of her just coming through town; her husband Louis was there looking super hot. The colourful parade was the first bright spot Avignon had seen in months, so people came out. Everybody, it’s just like they’ve all been dying of the plague for a long time, and they’re just like, “Ooh! Something to see.” And so, they’re watching this gorgeous young queen making her way through town in this parade of luxury.
But it wasn’t just like, “Hey, I’m here to hang out,” or whatever. She was there to talk to the Pope about a couple of things. One of those things was like, “Hey, can you forgive me for getting married with the Papal dispensation? Thanks!” And the other thing was the whole Papal investigation, finally, vis-à-vis had she killed her husband? This is where they’re going to decide like, did she kill her husband or not? And if they decided that she had killed her husband, then she probably would be executed. So, stakes could not be higher. She went in to see the Pope and she had, like, the best lawyers in the world talking for her, but then she’s also like, “And I would like to speak now as well.” This was rare because she was a woman and also because she was a queen and also because she had to speak in Latin, but guess what? She spoke Latin. So, she had this, like, amazing speech where she just sort of explained how she’s innocent of everything, clearly, she was just… the charisma.
She had this great speech, delivered it perfectly, and part of what she said was just like, “Look, I just walked through your plague-ridden city. I just rode through your plague-ridden country, down the street, passed the people with the plague, and guess who didn’t get the plague? Me. I did not get the plague.” This was the sort of thing where everybody had sort of assumed that the plague was religious-based or, sort of like, the people who were getting it, they were like, “They must be the bad people. They must be the sinners.” So, people would go to the Pope and to the bishops and try and get blessings and stuff so they wouldn’t get the plague… They all still did. She was basically working with the understanding of “If you’re a bad person, you get the plague.” So, she was like, “Look, I just walked through this whole city, and I didn’t get the plague. So, guess what? I didn’t kill my husband, Andrew.“ And the Pope was like, “Yeah, great point. And you are not only innocent, but you’re completely above suspicion. PS, I’m also going to issue this document saying that your marriage to Louis of Taranto is valid, even though you didn’t ask my permission beforehand.” So, just like, win. Win-win for Joanna. Everything’s amazing. So, she hung in Avignon, surrounded by plague, but not catching plague, she gave birth to a daughter who she named Catherine.
At around the same time… So, Maria, you remember, was a 19-year-old widow at this time, and the whole thing is like, well, who’s going to marry Maria? She’s, like, a super important person. So, Louis the Hungarian, the enemy had captured some princess from Naples, and they were like… Anyway, basically Louis the Hungarian was like, “I want to marry Maria and then we can ally Hungary, Naples, everything will be great.“ But before that marriage could take place, Maria was abducted again, this is the second time, this time by Hugues, Lord of Baux and Count of Avellino, who forced Maria to marry with his eldest son and heir, Robert. So, this is again, she’s kidnapped by parents who forced her to marry their child, twice in a row! But Maria, not having this, and Joanna and her husband were like, “We’re not having this either.” So, what happened is when the ship was coming into port with Maria and this new— Oh, sorry, and this marriage had also been consummated by force. So, this poor woman.
Anyway, so came into dock. Louis, Joanna’s husband, armed himself and, accompanied by a small party of warriors, boarded the vessel and stabbed Hugues repeatedly with his sword before throwing the corpse of the victim into the sea. He was the one who kidnapped Maria, the father of the husband. Robert was arrested. Maria came ashore and spent the winter with her sister and her brother-in-law. Robert was eventually transported to a dungeon, and even though the Pope had said like, “Please don’t kill him. It was his father who kidnapped Maria, it wasn’t him,” Robert was executed. The whole execution of Robert, the son who was married to Maria, basically, he was executed when Joanna and her husband and the rest of the court were away on a holiday. While they were away, Maria stole into the castle with four armed men she’d hired for the purpose and had him hacked to pieces in her presence as a warning to those who had presumed upon the dignity of a royal princess of the house and Andrew in the future. So, it’s a very, like, Sansa Stark feeding Ramsay to the dogs moment where… I love this. I just told that confusingly so just to recap: Maria was kidnapped. Her brother-in-law rescued her, and then she hung out with them in the castle. The guy who she was forced to marry was put in jail, and then while Joanna and her husband were out of town, Maria hired some dudes, went into the castle and hacked this guy to pieces in front of her. So, just like, yes, Maria. Yes.
So meanwhile, Joanna and Louis. From early 1349 onwards, all documents in the kingdom were issued in the names of both husband and wife. So, Louis, it was a very much, like, King and Queen situation where it wasn’t like with Andrew where he didn’t have as much power. Louis was her equal here. As happened so much in this season of this podcast, there were some coin moments. The coins were issued, and Louis’s name always preceded Joanna’s, kind of like he’s the more important one. But guess what? He was terrible! So, the Hungarians attacked again, and Louis took advantage of that to wrest complete royal authority from his wife. He purged the court of her supporters and accused her favourite, who’s a guy called Enrico Caracciolo, he accused him of adultery and had him executed. And then two months later, Joanna and Louis’s daughter, Catherine, died aged one. So, he’s… a terrible husband.
Two years later, Joanna gave birth to her second child with Louis, another daughter, Françoise, and then that spring, they received the Pope’s formal recognition that Louis was the co-ruler of Joanna, that they were literally equal, the Pope said so. So, they had an elaborate procession through the streets of Naples to celebrate this fact and when they came home from the procession, their daughter had suddenly taken ill and had died aged eight months. So, if you’re keeping track, Joanna has had three children who all died, very young. She has no heirs, which means Maria is still in play here because she had some children from her first husband, Charles of Durazzo, so her children are maybe going to be the heirs. But spoiler, they’re all daughters.
So, Maria was again, imprisoned, maybe for arranging the murder of the guy? Unclear. Didn’t write down that detail in my notes. Anyway, she eventually was married to Louis of Taranto’s younger brother, Philip. So, she’s been married now three times, Joanna twice thus far. So, Louis is awful, but then he died after… 1362. So, they’d been married for 12 years. He died of the black plague, so sayonara. With that, Joanna finally had the opportunity to take all the power for herself. She was no longer a teenager, she was a woman, she’s an adult. She’d been queen now for quite some time and she was just like, “Guess what? I’m the queen, deal with it.” And she just started doing a bunch of things that were great, and they made her popular again with everybody. We’ll get into what those things were in a bit.
Then, at age 36, she decided to marry again, because it’s just, like, a safe thing to do, one hopes, just to have a man around potentially with armies to ally countries together, et cetera. So, her husband this time, this is going to be her third husband, and his name is James IV of Majorca. It seemed okay; he was the king of Majorca, so hopefully, he wouldn’t try and, like, usurp her power because he’s already the king of somewhere else. He wasn’t her cousin so they didn’t have to get the Pope’s permission and also hopefully that would mean that maybe they’d have an easier time conceiving children. But the thing is that James had been taken captive when he was a teenager and had only recently been released after spending 14 years as a prisoner in a small iron cage. So, he had psychological problems as well as numerous physical illnesses. He was prone to outbursts, he was physically violent with Joanna, sometimes in front of other people. Things became so bad that… Well, Joanna, she kept sleeping in the same room as him because she needed to have an heir, but she would have other people in the room with them so that he wouldn’t kill her. It was a short-lived marriage. I mean, good if you have to… I guess. But basically, he ran off to go fight some wars with some other Kings and he died of either his illnesses that he had, his chronic illnesses, or of poisoning. So, that was just a little detour. So, Joanna was again single, but still no children. She’d had a miscarriage during her marriage with him, but no living children.
And then we are in 1366, and Maria sadly died, aged 37, from complications due to childbirth. So, still, Joanna didn’t have any surviving children. So, the heirs continued to be Maria’s three surviving daughters, no sons. So, after all of this chaos, all of this chaos, things sort of settled down a bit in the sense of Joanna, her relationship with the Pope was good, it continued to be good. The period after James IV’s death is considered by most historians to be the most stable and prosperous part of Joanna’s rule. So, some of the things she did: She helped finance the Pope’s return to Rome, she hosted the Byzantine emperor, and she involved herself in even the most minute aspects of governing. She really, really enjoyed being queen, that’s what people wrote about her. Like, she really likes ruling. “She was a fair and judicious ruler and no law or edict, however minor, was ever carried out without her personal approval and seal. She supported and protected local businesses, created a new industry, crime was greatly reduced, and she was an ardent promoter of peace within the realm.” She also, there’s something where, like, she let women become doctors or something like that. I have the details on that later on, but she was just doing good things, things were good. And then she married again.
This time, her husband was called Otto of Brunswick. So, she was by this point 48 years old. He was 58, he was not a king. She wildly outranked him and so he knew he had no chance to, like, try and be king or whatever so he was good with that. She was good with the fact he wasn’t going to threaten her, he hadn’t spent 14 years on an iron cage, and he was also a seasoned warrior, which was helpful because the Hungarians, guess what? Still kept invading. Someone else who got mad about this was Charles of Durazzo, who is the father of Maria’s first husband. Everyone has a lot of the same names. Basically, the Durazzo’s continue to be a family who didn’t like Joanna. Louis the Hungarian didn’t like Joanna and then the Durazzo’s and Louis teamed up and that’s what happens next.
So, Joanna, at this point, she’s like, “Okay, clearly I’m 48 years old, chances are I’m not going to have any surviving children at this point.” So, she tried to figure out a solution to the whole succession thing by arranging a marriage between her youngest niece, Margaret of Durazzo, who was Maria’s youngest daughter, to— Oh no, this is where Charles of Durazzo comes from. Sorry, there’s literally three people in the story called Charles of Durazzo. Okay. So, that’s who this one is. So, there’s Charles of Durazzo, the father, Charles of Durazzo, Maria’s husband, and now this is Charles of Durazzo, a younger one who’s going to marry Maria’s daughter, Margaret. And so, Joanna thought like, “If we just marry these two people together, then that will be who the heirs will be. Everything’s great.” The wedding was opposed by her former brother-in-law, Margaret’s stepfather, AKA Maria’s third husband, Philip, Prince of Taranto, and then the Pope thing happened.
So, what happened is the Pope died and everything went crazy. So, I mentioned one of the things that Joanna had done was return the Papal court to Rome, which was a popular thing at the time to some people. So, the last few popes had been French because the court had been in Avignon, remember the plague city where she went to talk to the Pope? Most of the cardinals are French as well. So, the Romans wanted the next Pope to be a Roman person because that’s where the papacy, whatever, the Pope house was. So, in the spirit of compromise, who was elected was a person from Naples, a Neapolitan man who took the name Urban VI. And it turns out he was chaotic evil, he was not good at being Pope. So, then there was another rival Pope who was Clement VII and Joanna decided to back Clement VII. So Urban, the bad Pope, sort of got all of Joanna’s enemies together. So, Louis the Hungarian, Charles of Durazzo, all the enemies all sort of teamed up in this sort of like evil Avengers thing against Joanna. They declared Urban, the bad Pope, who was still technically the Pope, but there was two Popes. So, there’s Clement, who was the Pope, not in Rome; Urban is the Pope in Rome. Two Popes. It’s called a schism, it’s a big thing. If you want to know about more Pope history, there’s another podcast I would recommend to you called PONTIFACTS, which, I don’t think they’ve gotten to this point in history yet. I could be wrong. But anyway, it’s a podcast where every episode they talk about a different Pope, very exciting.
But Urban, the bad Pope, declared Joanna a heretic and he declared that her kingdom, which was sort of controlled by the Pope, was now forfeit and he bestowed upon Charles of Durazzo, who is dead Maria’s daughter’s husband. So, Joanna’s just like, “Okay, what are we going to do?” So, she agreed to adopt Louis I of Anjou as her heir, replacing Charles of Durazzo to try and make this all be not happening, I guess. But then because of this, Charles of Durazzo invaded Naples in November 1380 at the head of an army, mainly composed by Hungarians. So, Joanna’s husband at this point, Otto of Brunswick… She mustered as many troops as she could, but Otto is unable to stop the forces of Charles of Durazzo so he was defeated and Charles entered Naples on July 16, 1381 at 7:00 PM, that’s very specific, and besieged Joanna in the castle. So, without any help, because her husband, the troops, everyone had been defeated, Joanna was forced to surrender on August 25th. Oh wow, but she held out for a month so good job. And then she was imprisoned and Charles of Durazzo went on to name himself the king, I do believe.
But Louis of Anjou, Joanna’s chosen heir, decided to go to Avignon at the head of a powerful army to try and rescue Joanna. But by the time he got there, turns out she was already dead. So, what had happened was that Charles of Durazzo knew that Louis of Anjou was coming, and he knew, and we’ve seen this before in other stories, like, as long as Joanna was alive, she was a threat to Charles to take back being queen again. So, Charles of Durazzo had ordered the execution/assassination of Joanna. So, she was murdered on July 27, 1382, aged about 55 or 56. Charles, of course, was like, “She died of natural causes,” but other people were there too and knew what happened. She was probably strangled or suffocated or something else… Very sad.
So, she died, and then to sort of like prove to everybody like, “Oh, guess what? She’s dead. So, I, Charles of Durazzo, am the king so don’t worry about it,” her body was brought to Naples, and it was put on display to the public as proof of her death. But the thing was that she had suffered during the months of her captivity, she had been brutally murdered, and so evidently that greatly altered her appearance where people were just like, “This is clearly a dead body of a woman, but this isn’t the glamorous queen who we all knew and loved.” So, people went to see her body and they were like, they didn’t recognize her, she didn’t look like her. So, some people thought she’s dead, some other people thought she wasn’t. So then, of course, it was like gossip, conspiracy theories, like “Is she still alive and Charles trying to cover that up?” Because of the confusion, her death would not be officially recognized for nearly two years in documents.
After the viewing, there followed the problem of what to do with her remains. So Urban, the bad pope, had excommunicated her so she couldn’t be buried in consecrated church property. And Charles of Durazzo, who had just killed her, didn’t want to, like, honour her. So, there was no great funeral statue erected for her to memorialize her many achievements as there had been for her grandfather, Robert the Wise. She was not buried next to her sister or her mother or her father because they were all on consecrated ground. So, in the end, the compromise that they decided on at the initiative of some nuns who she had been generous to throughout her reign… So, just outside the edge of the nave, so I think just outside of the church, “in the lowly space that occupies the entranceway to a back door leads from the main body of the church to the cloister behind…” So, just this, like, little bit of dirt “… was a deep well covered with a stone slab into which the bones of the dead were often discarded. Into this well, went the remains of Joanna to lie unmarked and forgotten through the centuries.”
So, I honestly, first came across her as an interesting historical person in the “Queens of Infamy” essay by Anne Theriault, which I’m a thousand percent going to link to in the show notes to this episode because it was one of my main sources. I also read… There’s a really good biography by Nancy Gladstone, it’s called The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily by Nancy Goldstone, which I, again, will link to. But I’m saying all of that because like, I guess she’s been like in history, a notorious person, I just had not come across her. I didn’t know about that. So, as per Nancy Goldstone’s book, she says:
Her story, when it is recounted at all, focuses entirely on her notoriety as the queen who murdered her husband and not on the many impressive accomplishments of her reign. During her long eventful reign, Joanna held together a large and far-flung dominion, which included Provence and all of southern Italy and even expanded her rule, however briefly, into Sicily and Piedmont. She was the last medieval ruler to do so. After her death, Provence broke away from the kingdom and was ruled by Louis of Anjou’s heirs, who eventually incorporated the county into France, while Naples came for a short time under the sway of Charles of Durazzo’s son and then his daughter before falling in the next century to the crown of Aragon.
For more than 30 years, this queen fed the poor and cared for the sick, built churches and hospitals, reduced crime and promoted peace, protected trade, and introduced new industry within her borders. She guided her subjects to recovery from the many instances of plague, war, famine and depression, endemic to the second half of the 14th century. The odds against her securing her reign were enormous, that she would survive to rule for 30 years, impossible, and yet she did. She’s earned the right to be remembered for what she was, the last great sovereign in the Angevin tradition, a worthy successor to Charles of Anjou and Robert the Wise. To this day…
Like, asterisks when this book was written, but still to now,
… there is still no monument or funeral statuary commemorating Joanna at the Church of Santa Chiara, where her bones were dumped in a well, and the ban of excommunication remains in force.
She’s still excommunicated from the church because of bad pope. That’s the biography.
So, it’s time to do the scoring for Joanna of Naples. As per always, there’s four categories which we apply to all the women talked about on this podcast, not because any of them are better or worse than any of the other ones, but it’s just, like, on the scale of four different things, where does each of them land?
The first category is Scandaliciousness. So, it’s not just like, did this person become involved and/or instigate scandalous events? But like, how scandalous were these scandals? So, with Joanna, I think we’ve got the whole, like, death of her husband, and her shutting the door, and how everybody was like, “Ooh, did she do it?” And then it’s like, was she having an affair with Louis of Taranto? The whole, like, parade down the street. Like, okay, murder, as per other episodes of this podcast, tends to rate pretty high on scandaliciousness. Did she kill him? I don’t know. I mean, personally, I think so, and good for her. But she might not have. But the fact that she is, apparently, widely remembered as, like, that lady that killed her husband, maybe, that’s worth at least a 7 or an 8 for scandaliciousness. Like, there weren’t a lot of little scandals; she was actually very religious throughout all of her life. Multiple marriages… Shitty marriages, that’s sort of… I’m going to give her 7.5 for Scandaliciousness.
The next category is Schemieness. So, for some people, that means like, what were their schemes like that they did against their rivals? And for some people, like her, where she’s a queen, it’s like, well, what were their schemes like vis-à-vis being the queen and like invading other places? And she did a lot of if we’re going to classify everything as a scheme, like her scheme to go to see the Pope and explain herself. And then she convinced him, and he was like, “Not only did you not kill him, but no one should ever suspect you of having killed him again. PS. You got married without asking my permission. But that’s fine.” Like, her schemieness! Just in terms of planning, she also did lots of cool stuff as I own the podcast, like, for her people. Schemieness, I’m going to say 9.5. 9.5 Schemieness for her.
Significance is one that’s always… Sometimes it’s straightforward, and sometimes it is just, like, not at all. So, she was queen for 30 years, which is a significant amount of time. While she was there, she did significant things. Some people greatly benefited from the stuff she did whilst being their queen. In terms of like the grand scheme of like world history, I don’t know how much of the stuff that she did… Like, if someone else had been there instead of her, Naples could have been taken over by somebody else or subsumed into a different kingdom earlier. It eventually was, but that doesn’t mean the fact that she kept it from happening doesn’t make her significant. This is like… This is tricky. But frankly, I think, and this is my skill that I get to decide, she was queen for 30 years, she did a lot of stuff as queen. That is significant. I’m going to give her an 8 for Significance.
The fourth category is the Sexism Bonus, which is the how much did being a woman and dealing with a bunch of awful men get in the way of her just, like, being amazing and a self-actualized person? For her, this is another one sort of like Queen Anne, where it’s kind of like, when she became queen, when she was named heir, people were against it already. They’re like, “Eugh, she’s a girl,” whatever. But like, everybody was so scheming already. People were scheming against her not just because she was a woman but, like, for all different reasons. Like, if we were scoring her sister Maria, that’s like a 10. Maria suffered a lot because of being a woman in the time and place that she was in. Joanna did as well. I don’t know if she was if it was a king, if this all had been like a king or like multiple wives, it would just been… It would have been different. So much of her life was dominated by, like, who was her husband? And like, is she going to have an heir? Or whatever, and that’s all related to the Sexism Bonus. I’m going to give her… sure, why not… Uhh, yeah. So, what if we give her an 8 for the Sexism Bonus?
I’m just going to do a little quick math, don’t mind me. Can you do math in your head? Good for you. I can’t. So, 7.5 plus… I messed this up for myself, but with the 0.5s. Usually, I can just do this out of my fingers… Oh, shit! 33 is her score if I just added it up correctly, which I assume I did. 33! That’s the highest score of all ever. I’m going to post the whole everybody’s score somewhere so you can see it because I always find it interesting to look at it as well. But like, not just is this the highest score of this Season Two, 33, but this is the highest score of ever, seasons one or two or anything. The closest person just below her, like, second place right now, Agrippina the Younger has a 31. Empress Matilda has a 30 tied with Juana of Castile with 30. Queen Anne, 29.5. Cleopatra, 28. I mean, a lot of this is I was doing this season of women leaders, so a lot of them, they made all those points in Significance because they were they just had more significance, they were queens. Isabella of Castile had a 27. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, 26. Boudica, 23. And that’s where this season’s queens landed. But even last season, Season One’s “winner,” was Elizabeth Báthory, who got a 29, and here’s Joanna of Naples with a 33! Well done. Well deserved.
What a wild story. Do you see now why? Because the story I was going to tell you is just a pandemic, like, 15-minute special was going to be her going to see the Pope and there being plague in the city and her being like, “I don’t have the plague, therefore, I didn’t kill my husband.” But there’s so much you need to understand to even get to that point that it just became quite obvious that this needed to be a full-length episode.
So, that’s Season Two. Season Two of Vulgar History. The things I have to tell you as well are, first of all, if you’re looking for books to read about cool or interesting or whatever women from history, weird things that happened, I have a curated list on Bookshop.org. The link will be in the show notes, but it’s at Bookshop.org/Lists/Vulgar-History-Recommends. And that’s sort of listing the nonfiction books that I have read, that I find interesting, but also the ones that I have been using to help plan these podcast episodes. We have our little merch store, which is at Teespring.com/Store/VulgarHistory. I have a new item in there every week that I’m doing the podcast. So, there’s a different design you can get it on the shirt or a bag or a mug or whatever, and it’s inspired by the women who we talked about that week. When you look there, guess what? There’s going to be Joanna of Naples merch. So, Teespring.com/Store/VulgarHistory.
If you want to support me and my writing, you can do that at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. One of the perks that you get there at one of the donation levels is that I’ve been doing some Patreon-only mini-episodes about the gross men from these stories and just sort of what I do in them… So, those are called So This Asshole. They’re sort of a mini episode looking at some of the men who just, like, fucked up the lives of these women who we love. And I score them on the Scandaliciousness, Schemieness, Significance, and Sexism, but it’s like a Sexism minus bonus. So, all of their scores are like, minus. Their Schemienss gets them minus points and so we see how they all do. So, that’s all on the Patreon. But of course, there’s all these episodes here on the not Patreon everybody can listen to, no paywall or whatever. I’m going to continue doing more pandemic super specials between the seasons because I’ve been reading a lot about disease history, and I need someone to talk to about it.
You can follow me as well on Instagram @VulgarHistoryPod and Twitter @VulgarHistory. And if you feel like you want to email me for some reason, like, sure! Lean into that. That’s cool. Do you have thoughts about some of these women? Do you have, like, suggestions of who you think would be another cool person for another podcast or for, like, another theme? I don’t know what the theme is yet for Season Three. I have some ideas, but let me know. So, it’s at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com. Oh, also on the Patreon, I’m going to be posting a poll soon about ideas for new seasons and who I should talk about, and patrons get to vote on that stuff. So anyway, I hope you’re all keeping well, washing your hands, et cetera. And I’ll see you next time.
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So, when I was getting ready to re-release this episode, I did remember that she had gotten a really high score. I remembered she got a high score, and I thought, “Did I score her too high?” And I was ready to reconsider her score. But no. No. I think I think it’s a suitable score. This is, like, a real scandalous saga. I love a super sexy scandalous saga, and this this truly had everything. I’m happy with her having her score of 33. I will just let you know some other recent episodes… Like, right now, the highest score in the Fredegund Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale is Fredegund herself with a 38. Queen Margot has a 37.5. Manuela Sáenz, 37. And Njinga, Queen Njinga has a 36. Hürrem Sultan, 36. Mary, Queen of Scots, 36. Like, that’s the upper, upper, upper echelon. But there’s several people now above Joanna, but she’s in really great company there at her 33. Her next-door neighbours: Kristina of Sweden, 33.5, and then Anna May Wong, who has 32.5.
So, if you want to see the whole Scandaliciousness Scale, actually, you can see that it is all available to see on my website, VulgarHistory.com. There’s a button there that says, like, “Scores,” and then you can kind of scroll down to see what scores who fits in where. And if there’s a high-scoring person you haven’t heard, you know those are going to be bangers. You know, those are going to be good episodes. If someone gets a score above 30, like, the story is going to be stellar. It’s going to be excellent.
I also want to let everybody know that I am doing these special bonus episodes. So, it’s interesting. We were just listening to this Joanna of Naples episode, and in that, I was talking about the pandemic specials that I had been doing in 2020. And those, if you scroll all the way back on your podcast app, you can find the pandemic minisodes that I was doing. And now I’m doing Canadian history minisodes because it’s my podcast, and I want to do that, and the current international political state of affairs is that Canada is having a surge of reactionary patriotism that is kind of heartening and kind of all-encompassing. I’m doing my part for the cause by learning about women from Canadian history who I didn’t know about before and then talking to you about it. So, there’s always a Vulgar History episode every Wednesday, and then for the for the foreseeable future, every Friday, there’s going to be what I call the Canadian Heritage Minute(s), which are episodes that might be 20 minutes long, that may be an hour and a half long, just talking about women from Canadian history.
If you’re in Canada, there is a federal election coming up and I do want to say — I appreciate this about Canada and I believe the United Kingdom is the same — it’s like, an election is called, and then you campaign for a month, and then one month later, the election happens. And then the people take their new jobs right away. You know, America with your, like, years-long primary system could be quicker, you could get this all over with a lot faster. Anyway, if you’re in Canada… It’s funny, I was like, I’m sure I’ve done episodes before when there’s been Canadian federal elections going on, but it’s never felt so fraught before. If you’re in Canada, basically what I am advocating for is I don’t want the Conservatives to win government here, and the way that we do that is by voting strategically, which in most parts of Canada means voting for the Liberal Party. If you’re in a riding where they have no chance, like me in Saskatoon, then you vote for the NDP. I’ll put a link in the show notes; there’s a website about how to find, like, how your riding is looking and what’s the best way to strategically vote so that the Conservatives don’t win a majority government. Canadians, elbows up. Let’s do this thing.
In the meantime… Well, I always like to let you know what’s coming up next week on the podcast. What’s coming up next week on the podcast is it’s going to be another Ann plus guest episode, and it’s a guest I’m so excited about. It’s someone I’ve always wanted to talk to. I’m really excited that this author has a new book coming out, and I’m really excited to talk to them about it. I’m just it’ll be an episode of just, like, Ann Foster: Fangirl talking to this person. I’m really excited to talk to you. That’s coming up next week. The week after that, we’re going to get back into the Season Seven of it all, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Marie Antoinette? We’re going to be doing the French Revolution, women of the French Revolution, that’s going to be kicking off in two weeks, the next, sort of, miniseries part of Season Seven as a series. So, thank you for hanging in here. Thanks for listening to this podcast.
I hope I’m providing you distraction and enjoyment. I know that in some other episodes, I’ve described myself as your emotional support Canadian. I’m rescinding that because, you know, the thing that people say in therapy and also on airplanes where you need to put your oxygen mask on yourself before you can help other people, myself and all of Canada, we’re putting our oxygen masks on ourselves right now. So, this podcast can support you, obviously, but myself, I’m unavailable currently as an emotional support Canadian. Americans, I’m sure you can support one another.
If you want to support this show… Ha-ha! Look at that segue. There’s so much stuff going on that is going to be going on, stuff like me writing a book, the book being available for pre-order soon, me having live in-person events and stuff. You can keep up to date in the least annoying way. The least amount of messages from me is if you join my mailing list, which just means once a month, I’ll send you an email with, like, here’s the highlights. Here’s what you need to know about what’s happening in the Vulgar History world, in the Rebel of the Regency world, and the Ann Foster world. You can sign up for that newsletter at VulgarHistory.com/News. And then I also have a Substack newsletter where every other week I post essays about women from history, that’s VulgarHistory.Substack.com.
If you want to get, like, all of the updates from me, everything I’m thinking and doing, I post that stuff on my Patreon, which is at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. You can join the Patreon for free just to get the updates on what’s going on, including the free podcast spin-off that I do there, talking about the book I’m writing, Rebel of the Regency. If you want to support me financially, wherever you are in the world, you can support this little Canadian podcast. So, if you pledge $1, and I think that’s $1 (US) a month, you get early, ad-free access to all episodes of Vulgar History. And for $5 or more a month, you get access to the early, ad-free episodes, but also bonus episodes of Vulgarpiece Theatre, where I talk about costume dramas with Allison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson, as well as episodes of So This Asshole, where I talk about shitty men from history. There’s a vast archive of both of those and I hope to be back recording new spin-off episodes once I finish writing my book and I have time again. And then also, if you join the Patreon at $5 a month or more (US), you can join our Discord, which is just like a big group chat for all of us to, you know what, maybe that’s where we’re emotionally supporting one another.
I also want to mention, if you want to support a small woman-owned business and also me in the process, you can support our brand partner, Common Era Jewelry. So, Common Era Jewelry is owned by a woman named Torie. She’s originally from Australia, and now she lives in New York Cité, and she designs beautiful jewelry. So, it’s a small business, it’s a woman-owned business. If you’re really trying to be thoughtful and mindful about what you’re buying, this is a company that you can look towards. So, the pieces are entirely, like, Torie does all the designing herself. The pieces are made, they’re crafted in New York City, so everyone involved has health care and good wages. Even the packaging, which is really cute, is made by a little family-owned business in Chicago. So, they have beautiful designs inspired by women from history and myth, and I’m excited to let you know they also have a new collection of zodiac jewelry like you’ve never seen!
So, Torie was like… I think there’s been requests to have zodiac jewelry, and she’s like, there’s so many zodiac jewelry, and she didn’t want to do it unless she could do it in a Common Era, new, interesting way. And by new, I mean old, I mean, like, classical. So, she found this 17th-century alchemical manuscript and this collection is inspired by that. “Reimagining zodiac jewelry through the lens of ancient alchemical wisdom. Each pendant features an ancient sigil crafted under precise astrological conditions, once believed to hold protective and transformative powers.” And I know so many people are into horoscopes and astrology and everything. And even people who aren’t, like the whole thing about the Pluto in Aquarius, the position of the stars that is the same now as it was in the same time as the French Revolution, it’s like, you can’t deny that there are similarities going on. So, “More than adornment, these pieces are modern talismans, symbol of connection, intention, and timeless magic of the stars.” Actually, speaking of zodiac and horoscope things, we’re in Aries season, which is my time. I am an Aries. I don’t know, I’ve done an online thing, but my chart is, like, Aries Sun, Aries Moon, Aries Rising. I could not be more Aries. So, this is my time. I’m excited about it.
If you vibe with your horoscope like that, you know, Common Era Jewelry. Their pieces are available in solid gold as well as a more affordable gold vermeil. The zodiac stuff in gold vermeil, note, there’s a waitlist for those right now, but you can go on the waitlist. They’ll be ready later this year. And Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout. And if you just, wherever you’re listening to this, just scroll down to the episode description, there’s a little link there that’ll take you to either of those links.
If you want to support this little Canadian podcast by getting merch, merch is available. If you’re in America, you can go to VulgarHistory.com/Store, which takes you to our TeePublic/now it’s called the Dashery shops. You can see all the designs there and choose to get it on a T-shirt or a mug or a sticker, or whatever. If you’re outside the US, the shipping is better if you go to Redbubble, and our Redbubble store is VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Same stuff available in both places.
If you want to get in touch with me, you can by using the form at VulgarHistory.com. It says “Contact me” or something, and that was an email to me as well. You can also send me a DM on Instagram where I am @VulgarHistoryPod, and I’m on Bluesky and I’m on Threads. And yeah, you know what? On Friday, look in your little podcast thing and there’ll be a new episode where I’m going to get more political, talk more about Canada stuff, but also the amazing tits out women of Canadian history. Until next time, elbows up, pants on, tits out. Talk to you next time.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples by Anne Theriault on Longreads
The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily by Nancy Goldstone
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Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at common.era.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout
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Get Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.com/store (best for US shipping) and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com (better for international shipping)
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